


The Ties That Bind Us (Are Dead Fish and a Statue)

by Jana



Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Crossdressing, Mentions or Diablo, Not Really Revenge, weird friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:39:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jana/pseuds/Jana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After almost a month of no contact Harley Quinn appears in June's kitchen out of blue in the middle of the night to drag Rick and her into a mission of revenge. But some things are not easy to say out loud and not all is as it first seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ties That Bind Us (Are Dead Fish and a Statue)

After the mess that was Enchantress Rick had been given a month's leave of absence to "facilitate June's recovery" and he didn't think for a moment it was actual kindness. Amanda Waller was a complicated woman with complicated motives and this blessing was a reward, a bribe and a threat all rolled into one. She didn't want the Washington to learn Enchantress had been a mess of her own making and he didn't want anyone to know June had been Enchantress, unwilling though she had been. He took the leave in the spirit it was given and selfishly enjoyed his time with her. Fortunately June had only few memories of the ordeal, disjointed and foggy, though that was well enough for some creative nightmares.

What time he didn't spend with her he used to visit the rest of the Suicide Squad. He personally delivered Floyd's letters once a week and took the time to visit the rest of the Squad to see all was as well as could be. He was the one who finally changed Crock's light bulb when it turned out none of the guards were willing to enter the cell and stand on a ladder with both of their hands occupied. He would have protested how wet the dismal cell was, a thin layer of water glistening first black and then yellow on the floor, but as it turned out Crock actually preferred it that way; his skin started cracking when it got dry.

"Would vaseline help?" Rick asked because the cell still didn't look like anyone should live there. "Or some other kind of cream?"

"Never has before. My name's Waylon," he said when Rick left in lieu of thanks. The looks he had gotten from the guards had startled him, almost equal parts of offended and jealous.

"You walked in, you weren't scared and then walked out, unharmed," Floyd explained it to him later. "They sure as hell don't want us to like them, but deep down they're all afraid of us and they hate it. You aren't." And it made sense in a sad sort way. Rick wondered if none of the guards ever scared themselves when they thought what kind of people they allowed themselves to be at work.

He got Boomerang - they weren't in first name terms yet - a radio and a punching bag of his own, Waylon more meat for dinner and Floyd books. He lit candles for Diablo in a church, not because he was Catholic or particularly religious in any way, but because Diablo had been. He got Harley Quinn nothing for the obvious reason and mostly cringed when he remembered where she was, or rather with whom. Belle Reve wasn't a _good place_ by any stretch of the definition, but compared to Joker? He even met Katana, no first name terms yet, though she was the one to approach him. The first time he thought it was a coincidence. He saw her in the mall and his first thought was how strange she looked without the mask, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket. They exchanged a few words and she continued her way and that was that. Except it kept happening at cafés and on the street and he knew she was checking up on him.

"The rest are fine, though they still hate being imprisoned," he told her one time in a bar. It was an old building with too many bay windows and two Dorian pillars framing the door and it reminded him of a pretentious man with warts, but the music was good at least. June had just left for the ladies' room and Katana had emerged from the crowd like a ghost, taking the chair for a minute. She was wearing a white dress and a single red flower in her hair. "I'll tell them you sent your best regards," he told her.

"Thank you," Katana answered, finished her drink and left. It was a strange friendship, but no stranger than what he had with the rest.

But there was no sign of Harley, not until Leave Day 26. Rick woke up to a noise in the middle of the night and light turning on in June's kitchen only to find Harley sitting there like it was the most natural thing in the world, thankfully no Joker in sight.

It made for a bizarre sight, to see her in June's kitchen. It had clearly been intended to be a modern wonder with metal and slate for their industrial vibe and then June had decorated it with mass-produced table and old chairs that didn't match because that was what real people did. They replaced the old, awkwardly mashed things together and left yesterday's dishes in the sink. In the middle of all this Harley was an alien apparition, something unreal and at the same more present than anything else. There was a spade circling her left eye, which he was pretty sure was make-up and not a tattoo, but other than that she looked just like before; colourful and dangerous, this time with a holster at her hip.

"What are you doing here?" he asked and lowered his gun a little, but not too much. He was terribly aware of June at his back and how unpredictable Harley was. Besides, if Joker had told her to kill him she surely would have... though he would have expected the man to be present to gloat.

"I need your help on a mission of revenge. And hi there, Summer," Harley said and waved, clearly looking over Rick's shoulder.

"I'm not going to help you kill anyone!" he protested. He didn't even dare hope Joker might have died; she wouldn't have been so cheerful then.

"It's not about killing anyone," Harley said. "I'm going to fill three men's cars with dead fish."

Rick did a double take at that, immediately suspicious. He mightn't have known Harley long, but he knew her well enough. Filling someone's car with fish for shits and giggles would have been in character, but if she actually wanted revenge she would have just killed the men. He gave a brief thought to arresting her; it was his duty and the responsible thing to do. But June was at his back, unarmed and inexperienced and vulnerable. Besides, some obstinate, clearly out-of-touch with the times part of him twisted painfully at the thought. Harley had been the one to cut out Enchantress' heart. He _owed_ her, and as little as he trusted Harley, he did like her.

"And there is nothing more to it than that?" he asked and the dutiful part of him couldn't believe that wasn't a no. Harley's smile showed two rows of pearly white teeth.

"Nothing more than that, and Mister J's busy elsewhere. A girl scout's promise!" swore with a hand over her heart. Rick would have liked to be able to say she was never a girl scout, but he couldn't be sure.

"I'll come as well," June said and Rick turned around, mouth already open to protest. June gave him a glare, hands at her hips. Her hair was a cloud of wisps around her face and she was wearing Winnie the Pooh pajamas and she was much too innocent for this all.

"I can't follow you in the field, but I can do this. When I was a teen I was part of a group that covered fifteen porches in menthol-Coke bombs in an hour. And when I say covered, I mean you couldn't step on the porch anymore. That took a lot of organizing, I'll have you know," she said. Why had they bothered with the menthol when they could have just poured the Coke on the porch? How, he wondered, she had still been undrenched at the end of the night? (Or, and this he thought reluctantly, how sticky she had been.)

"Why did you do it?" he decided on the safe question. June's glare merged into a slightly sheepish smile and he was again taken by how expressive she was when there was no stress, no pressure to keep something so much bigger and more dangerous than herself locked within.

"No good reason, I was just that age," she admitted. "You know how it is when everyone else is doing something."

"No, I don't. I was a military brat so straight-laced you could have used them for a level." As mother had followed his father everywhere he was posted, the opportunities for "being that age" had been few and far between and he had never actually taken them.

"Ooh, you had a corset!" Harley guessed and it startled laughter out of him. That would have probably given his father an aneurysm. He had been a good man, but in a very old-fashioned kind of a way. Unless it was in his own bachelor party after a sufficient amount of drinks cross-dressing never would have flown.

"Not a bad image," June said with so much impishness that Rick had to blink several times to hold back the tears. June had been well, mostly, but he didn't think he had _ever_ seen her impish.

"Oh, she's a fun one," Harley crowed. It was then that Rick realized there really was something different to the woman that night. Harley had enough sharp edges for anyone to hurt themselves at, but now they seemed almost blunted, or perhaps sheathed would have been a better word. If he didn't know and if she hadn't broken in at the dead of the night to talk about filling someone's car with fishes he would have thought her sane.

"I'll come along." And of course June had the last word and came as well. He insisted she too took a gun just in case.

They both dressed in dark clothes and caps to hide their faces from the cameras with gloves on their hands. Harley was unapologetically herself as she marched them to a car that clearly wasn't hers. It was a black jeep that had clearly been a fine car once upon a day, but now the paint had been scratched, the front bumper was dented and the exhaust pipe was a crime against nature.

"You make for good goons," she said as she ushered Rick to take the shotgun. "Though if you actually were, you'd have to dress up. So maybe you don't."

"I'll rather be a minion, thank you very much," June protested and clicked the seat belt on. "I have too much class to be a goon."

"Good for you, live in style," Harley purred and somehow put her entire weight on the gas pedal despite sitting down. The tires screeched as the car accelerated from zero to hundred with speed Rick would have sworn it incapable of.

"She's very personable," June said once she managed to swallow down her yelp, not insulting Harley by trying to keep her voice down in the small car. And whatever else Harley was, she was definitely much better company than Livewire. 

The new supervillain on the block and newest resident of Belle Reve, Waller had made her a replacement member for the team. Rick had thought to be considerate and introduced her to the Squad as her placement was announced. In five minutes flat the former blogger had managed to offend absolutely everybody and it was very good for her continued existence everyone had been cuffed. He made a weekly round for her too to make certain she wasn't unduly beaten with a stick, but that was as far as his sense of duty extended.

"And now for the extra revenge supplies. One corset, some bottles of Coke and menthol," Harley decided and made so tight a curve it was on the sidewalk.

"Be careful!" Rick shouted, well aware it was in vain. "And where would you even get a corset at this time at the night?" He wasn't going to wherever Joker's gang was holed up to raid her closet and he sure as hell wasn't taking June there.

"This is Gotham, silly. There's always somewhere you can get a corset in the middle of the night." Harley's words failed to make him feel any better, but even then. Perhaps it was that she was alive and there and they were close enough to friends, or perhaps it was that he had never been that age. He had never resented his father and didn't resent him now, he had loved him and loved him still; death claimed only the flesh, not emotions. But the truth still remained that he had never been that age. Or perhaps it was the late hour or that he had already agreed once and some weird inertia of insanity, perhaps it was the position of the stars. He didn't know, but June's eyes were asking him if he was going to do it.

And the answer was: why the hell not?

Gotham was a city of two sides and deep economical divide. The good side was old houses big enough to call manors and sleek skyscrapers in steel and glass and chrome reaching towards the moon, it was safe suburbs and clean middle-class neighbourhoods. The bad side was gunfire and sirens and the shouting of young men, it was dilapidated factories and graffiti-covered blocks, restaurants with roach problem and streets the police avoided like the plague. It was the part that had somehow spawned Batman.

In one of the badder parts, the somewhere to buy a corset turned out to be the shadiest sex shop Rick had ever seen. The entry was through a back alley he would have been afraid of entering at that time of the night - or at all - if he hadn't been certain the entirety of Gotham's underground knew that messing Harley wasn't just suicidally stupid, it was actually worse for more reasons than one. There were red fake velvet curtains and actual jerk-off booths, half the light bulbs needed replacing and the smell of latex didn't quite cover the smell of something fleshier. Behind the back of the huge man sitting behind the counter there was a door left ajar and from the other side Rick could hear music, loud conversation and clinking of glasses. Harley marched to the clerk with the gait of a woman with a mission.

"My goon here needs a corset," she said without preamble. The man didn't even blink, but pointed her towards the far left corner of the shop.

"After the straight jackets," he grumbled and took a gulp from a can of beer.

"This isn't Kansas, Toto," June muttered to him. "But in a very creepy way it's... not cool or nice. But interesting," she continued. And Rick understood what she was trying to say. This was kind of slumming with a local guide, seeing something they never would have otherwise. It wasn't cool and it sure as hell wasn't nice, but there was the thrill of something different, of doing something nobody in their circles ever would, of experiencing this just once as tourists.

The rows of different sex clothes seemed clean at least, much to his relief. Rick had been to sex shops before and in comparison there weren't that many options. It still made for an intimidating display when he was suddenly choosing something for himself. The corsets with breast cups were obviously out, but there was still the choice between leather, latex and fabric, bones or no bones, black or shiny red or dark, muted patterns, adorned with lace or without.

"A little help here," he asked plaintively and June patted at his shoulder.

"No latex, that would make you look either cheap or a dominatrix," she told him and took out two corsets. The first was black leather and the second probably made of cotton with an understated pattern of black flowers on a purple background.

"You'll want to make sure it fits," Harley said. "It's got to settle just between the bottom of your rib cage and the top of your pelvis. Take my word for it, you don't want to let it hike too high."

"I'm not going to try it on here," Rick protested; he dreaded to think the condition the fitting rooms must be in. He very much didn't think about Harley wearing a corset because some things were just too much information.

In the end they picked the flower-adorned one in size that looked like it would fit well enough. Harley also insisted they buy two masks because, as she said, all her Puddin's goons and minions wore masks.

"I'm not _his_ goon," Rick spat out with more vitriol than he had intended to let through. Harley froze and looked him into the eye. For a moment the air between them hummed with tension like high voltage just looking for an outlet, with she knew and he knew she knew and she knew he knew she knew precisely what Rick thought of Joker. And then Harley begun to muse on whether dogs, cats or birds would be the best pick and Rick followed her lead in wordless agreement to let that sleeping dog lie. 

In the end they settled for a bird mask for June, one with blue feathers and sequins that wouldn't have been out of place in a masquerade. Rick got a leather dog mask that looked like it was ripped off a bondage pin-up magazine and concluded it was a small revenge for his earlier comment. He contemplated buying something for Boomerang now that he was there. While Rick assumed the rest of the Squad was uncomfortable with masturbating in their cells where there were cameras, saving it for the showers, Boomerang had once stated without preamble he did it to embarrass the guards.

"The men feel like they are watching gay porn and the women feel dirty," he had said while Rick had tried to figure how he had gotten into the conversation in the first place. "I have no shame and they do. Lucky me! So if you don't mind buying some masturbation aid to make it more interesting..."

And he felt bad for not doing it because Belle Reve? The place was a crime against humanity. He tried to fulfill all the demands he could call reasonable because the Squad deserved someone in their corner, but he was also very aware of Boomerang's sense of humour. He would tease Rick about it at the worst possible moment and that would inevitably be when Waller was there, which. No. Just no, Boomerang would have to do with his hand.

They were just approaching the counter when there was a slam sounding from the other side of the wall, followed by a thud and a loud scream.

"Police! Everybody freeze!"

June blinked and jerked violently as people begun to pour in through the open door and past the clerk, the wave pushing him hard against the counter. It was hard-looking men in leather jackets and half-dressed women and it was chaos. Harley ran for the exit with a loud whoop and Rick grabbed June's hand, yanking her along with the flow. Somewhere behind them the police followed with guns drawn and Rick didn't look back. Four shots broke the silence of the alley, but there were no police in sight, only Harley crouching behind the jeep parked into the alley and aiming at the corner. The drunks were milling around uncertainly, unwilling to get out of the alley and unable to return.

Rick and June didn't waste any time jumping to the backseat and that was when Harley leaped in too, whistling the theme of some cop show which's name eluded Rick right then.

"And now we blow this joint!" Harley crowed and hit the pedal. A few men tried to make it to the car, only to be pulled back by those who seemed to recognize her.

There were a few shots fired after the car and two police vehicles even followed for a short while, but Harley's driving got even crazier and in the end it was the bad part of the city. The police were wary and Rick would have bet a big sum of money Harley steered right into one of the really bad streets because the police suddenly disappeared from the rear-view mirror like ghosts. He took a deep breath and only then realized he clutched June's hand with a grip so strong it had to hurt.

"That was different," June gasped. "Just what kind of establishment was that?" And then she kissed him like she was a drowning woman and he was the air. It was a kiss that hit Rick right between his legs and sent his head spinning, that intoxicated and tempted.

"The fun kind," Harley said proudly like she had owned the place. Rick was too busy kissing June like she was the air to answer and June's mouth was so soft and her hair smelled like flowers and sweat and something so uniquely June... He didn't know how long it took, but when he came up gasping for real air he realized there was a corset and a mask on his lap corset and that June's had been thrown to the floor, that they had run without paying. It was one of those bizarre worries that would sometimes hit after a moment that made him hear the rush of his blood in his ears. 

June curled against him and he felt big and important, like he was the only protection she had against some shapeless, nameless threat that was looming outside. He kept his hand on his gun, expected something worse to happen at any moment, but Harley maneuvered out of the bad neigbourhood with ease born from familiarity. After a brief trip to the nearest Tesco for the Coke and menthol there was only one hurdle left: putting the corset on in a moving car Harley was driving.

"Try not to move so much," June told him, lacing the back as Rick clung to the grab handle.

"You try not moving without a seat belt. Not so tight," he hissed as June pulled at the lacing at a sharp turn. Gaudy neon lights in red and blue flickered in the windows, blending with the yellow of the streetlamps. A chorus of horns tooting angrily followed them whichever turn they took.

"Think about the Victorian women who had to do this every day," she told him and tried to keep her voice stern. "Suffer, male, it's the karma of your chauvinist forefathers catching up." She failed.

"The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father," he groaned and tried to not breathe in too deeply.

In comparison to the night so far the actual revenge was almost anticlimactic. Rather than fill the cars with fish from floor to ceiling Harley had them pick a good armful each from the boot of the jeep. There was a selection of oval-shaped flat fish that Harley called butterfish, mackerels and red-striped fish that turned out to be rainbow trout of some sort. It was the better part of the city, the really rich part with old, pompous houses. The first one was what the Gotham residents called imperial style, heavy and ostentatious, but not actually all that pleasing for the eye. There was a large yard, surrounded by a wall of course and a wrought-iron gate that would only open for the right code. Climbing the wall wouldn't have been trouble for Rick or her, but just as he wondered how June was going to get over Harley punched the code in.

"Research is the mother-in-law of revenge," she said, leading the way to the garage. Automatic yard lights turned on as they approached, but she wasn't in any hurry, opening the garage like she had opened the gate.

The night was cold when he was wearing only corset for a top. Rick shivered as Harley picked the lock of the car and motioned them to throw the fish in. There were mackerels beneath the seats and butterfish on the back seat, but she spared the biggest for the front, gutting the trouts and spreading their guts all over the dashboard and rubbing it into the seats. The destruction was finished with a Coke-and-menthol bomb June set of and Rick wondered why she was going along with it. He wondered again why he was going along with it; though petty and pretty harmless, it was still criminal without governmental sanction, not to mention petty. But June was there at his back and Enchantress wasn't and Rick told himself the owner probably deserved it. He was probably a lobber with mafia ties, a corrupt city official or at least a tax dodger.

"And now we run!" Harley shouted and darted across the yard like dogs were at her heels, laughing maniacally.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked June as they ran after her.

"I owe her," she answered and turned a puzzled face to him. "And I wanted to see for myself what kind of person she is. Not really at all... what I expected."

"She can be charming when she wants," Rick answered, though he knew there was more to this night.

Car number two was parked at the underground lot of a high-end apartment building. It had a doorman and probably a private security service, but the parking lot was unguarded, easily opened with a code. The car in question had the vanity plate BAT4EV which Rick was sure was the reason Harley had picked it for this whatever. The third was a single house newer than the first had been and also better-looking, made to resemble a hacienda with little lamps hanging from the trees. He could hear a dog barking from the other side of the wall, but when Harley threw one fish over it the noise came to an end.

"Either that isn't a trained guard dog or you hit it over the head," he joked and Harley opened the gate. Option number one turned out to be the right one as they found a silky, golden Saluki happily munching on the trout, only wagging its tail at them.

"You are the worst guard dog ever," Rick told it. The Saluki proceeded to not care and continued to munch on the fish.

"Were its nails painted?" June asked from him with a whisper. "Whoever it is deserves his car vandalized just for that." And Rick kept expecting for the other shoe to drop, for Batman to magically appear and arrest them all, but nothing happened except that Harley broke a window, setting off the alarm on purpose. They ran for the car again past the dog that only jumped around them, seeming to think the whole thing some fun new game.

This time they drove off in silence, June's hand settling on his shoulder as light as the brush of the wind. Even Harley's driving was more sedate now and Rick felt strange melancholy, the approaching end to this terrible, wonderful, bizarre night. It was a loss. June was the love of his life and he had now shared something terrible and wonderful and bizarre with her; he had shared Harley, part of the past he shared with June that she couldn't and shouldn't remember.

"Tell me something crazy," Harley said, pulling at her pigtail with a hand that smelled like fish guts. Reciting that night probably wouldn't count and Rick tried to come up with something, feeling satisfied and disjointed and unreal.

"Do you know what paper towns are?" June asked lightly. Her mood turned from solemn to something that closely resembled giddiness in the space of a heartbeat, unapologetically wild. "Back when paper road maps were still in demand, cartographers often cut corners and copied each other’s maps. So they used to put a fake town on the map so they could check if someone just copied it. Or a fake road or river, something. On this one map there was a town named Knibbs, it's pretty close to Gotham actually. Then it became part of a crazy art project."

"I _love_ crazy art projects. Tell me more. Did someone actually build a whole town there?" Harley asked and took her eyes off the road. Strangely she seemed almost more collected than June right then, her manner outright sisterly.

"No, it was this art student who became a blogger and then a supervillain, Leslie Willis..." June begun and Rick couldn't help the groan that escaped him.

"Don't remind me about her," he pleaded and now Harley's head turned all the way so fast Rick thought he might hear her hair snapping like a whip.

"Livewire's my replacement?" she asked, the feverish gleam back to her eyes. Rick was surprised and then happy when he realized she was actually jealous, stupid and unwise though it was. He didn't think for a moment she was the kind of person who could handle jealousy well.

"Eyes on the road! And Chato's replacement, more like. She's a metahuman and her powers looks pretty promising too, tough not in his level. The problem is, everybody hates her." And it wasn't because she had come to replace Chato either, or mostly not because of it. Admitting this made him uncomfortable. Willis was objectively speaking the best of the lot; there were only three kills to her name and even those had been manslaughter, not murder. Yet whenever she opened her mouth Rick was forced to take a deep breath and remind himself that at least she didn't eat people.

That obnoxiousness was the breaking point forced him to confront just how much he had come to like several people whose morals - or lack thereof - he found utterly appalling. The feeling was equal parts guilt, worry and resignedness. He simply couldn't not like them and he didn't even really want to.

"Willis decided to create some weird cross between installation and digital art," June steered the conversation back on track. "She created Knibbs a website and a Wikipedia entry. There was a story about a settler named John Knibbs whose horse died under him and who decided it was as good a place for his farm as any. But she also decided Knibbs should have a statue of its brave founder."

As the story went, she had made an online petition for donations for this project. Some people probably hadn't realized the person whose monument they were donating for was imaginary, but really, in the net you could always find a lot of people willing to sacrifice a few dollars for the weirdest things. And from those drizzles had come a great stream, which had been needful because Willis' aims had been set high. The year had been 2010 and Willis had read news about North Korea now exporting giant statues at a good rate. So of course that was what she had to get and nothing else would do.

"North Korea!" Harley laughed and caught June's eyes through the mirror. "How did she even get it here? Is that even allowed or did she smuggle it in?"

"Technically speaking the trade sanctions don't say anything about statues, but she couldn't, not a straight route. But it's the internet age; many of the donators lived abroad, a few of them in Vietnam. The statue was first sent there and then sent on. And here she organized a crew of volunteers to help her transport it. Someone had a truck, another was a crane driver. I'm pretty sure that was an unauthorized loan, though." June fell silent for a moment, pulled his mask off and gave him a brief peck on the mouth.

"So now there is a huge bronze statue of a man on a horseback in the middle of nowhere and it's the most pompous thing ever. Very Soviet Union," she finished the story.

"How did she keep her mouth shut long enough for people to agree to help her?" He marveled. Even if the rate had been good, the amount of money Willis would have needed to accomplish all this blew Rick's mind.

"I want to see it one day," Harley said, and then in lower voice: "This was fun." And like bolt of lightning, it dawned on Rick what it was that she wanted.

Harley missed the Squad. She missed the unlikely comradeship that had developed between them, the easy companionship and the knowledge that someone had her back. She might love Joker truly, madly and mostly madly, but she wasn't stupid; he had left her behind once already and only rescued her after several months in Belle Reve. This "mission of revenge" had been playing at a real mission with June for a placeholder.

"It was fun," he agreed and Harley grinned at him through the rear-view mirror. The whole car stunk of fish and Harley was driving like this was a chase with bullets flying, yet for a moment it was all perfect. _There were needs Harley had that Joker couldn't fulfill_ and she had admitted it, even if only to herself. Rick wasn't deluding himself, Harley wasn't about to pick them over Joker, but perhaps one day she might. If only she was captured and sent back to Belle Reve, a thought that pulled him to two different direction. On one hand, if only they could get her away from Joker's poisonous influence... wasn't it sad that Belle Reve of all places could be considered an improvement for her mental health?

On the other hand that damned the penitentiary with faint praise. Rick was grateful he didn't have to choose because that would have destroyed the trust between them. Harley would never have forgiven that kind of backstabbing.

"Do you know what that was about?" June asked after she had dropped them at her apartment.

"Yeah, I think I do," Rick said softly and grinned. He hoped there would have been some way to let the rest of Squad know without the guards overhearing.

The next afternoon there was a little article about their vandalism, but even Harley, unmasked, wasn't recognizable from the security camera picture so Rick wasn't terribly worried. Batman might know it was her because he was scary like that, but he and June had been masked and that was that. They had joked about it all, waiting with a baited breath, unaware if they wanted a repeat or dreaded one.

"North Korea? he asked from Livewire the next time he made his duty visit. "What was the big idea of that?" And her face lit up like a Christmas tree, like he had just given her a present.

"No-one becomes an artist if they go for the easy option," she had said. "I wanted to see if I could do it." And he could have pointed out that she hadn't made it as an artist and not even as a professional blogger - the big companies were too brand-conscious to put up with the vitriol she had spewed, no matter how many followers she'd had - but he didn't. At least the team leader should give some thought to team cohesion and maybe she would make a decent member after all. Maybe. It was a big maybe, but still.

There was no repeat of the night, but three months later Batman captured Harley Quinn a second time. She was sent straight to Belle Reve and the trial was to be hold there too for fear of Joker liberating her in transit. Rick waited for four days to come see her until Zoe's next letter was due; Waller let him get away with a lot, but he didn't know where the line was drawn, where he changed from an asset to a liability. She didn't know he had done away with the switch willingly, thankfully. He had said it had been destroyed in action and the Squad, well aware of their own best interest, had corroborated. Amanda Waller was a difficult woman to lie to, but he had managed just that once. He was very convinced in the future it was best to avoid as many awkward question as possible.

The penitentiary was as forbidding as ever, the stark concrete walls and the chilly yellow lights creating cold impression despite the comfortable temperature. The guards' eyes were as cold as the lights when they followed him, but it was all Rick could do to keep from grinning nervously.

He hoped, perhaps foolishly, that Harley's capture hadn't been a coincidence. He didn't dare to hope she might have let herself be captured - this wasn't a place where anyone returned willingly, and in any case she was nowhere near ready to leave her Puddin' - but perhaps she had felt just a little bit conflicted. Perhaps she hadn't run quite as fast or fought as fiercely as she might have.

He could hear the screeching before the steel door was even opened. The first time he had seen Harley, with her hair open, there had been a kind of etheric beauty to her, but that wasn't the case now. Surrounded by four guards, Harley was flinging herself at the bars of her cage, her fingers held out like the claws of some bird of prey and her face distorted into a mask of rage. Were it not for her prison oranges she could have been the jump scare of a horror movie, a vengeful ghost. Rick was shocked; he had seen her on the wrong side of maniacal and bloody, but never so feral. And it was clear this was nothing out of ordinary. When she touched the net wrapped around the bars of the cage it shocked her and a yelp escaped his throat, drowned by her scream.

"That was enough!" he shouted and the guards jumped. And it was like someone (he) had just flipped a switch in Harley's head. She straightened from her crouch, the ugly lines of her expression smoothing into a charming smile.

"Long time no see, soldier," she called brightly, running her fingers through her hair. And there was that look again, the simmering resentment on the guards' faces when he had walked into Waylon's cell and walked out again.

"What was that about, Harley?" he asked her in lieu of a greeting.

"They!" Harley pointed at the guards and two of them startled, then looked shame-faced. "Took my espresso machine. It was my reward!"

"You don't get rewarded for escaping," the guard who stood the closest to the cage said. He had fairly handsome features with a straight nose and a strong jaw. Rick didn't let it show how much he wanted to plant his fist in the middle of that face.

"But for participating in Waller's project, she does. Bring it back; if you want an espresso machine in the break room you can petition for one." The guards looked mutinous at his words, but this was Waller's project and in its framework Rick had a lot of authority. Waller would have approved of taking the machine away, but Rick knew these people weren't going to make a complaint. They were much too low in the chain of command here and Waller made for an intimidating figure.

"Well, your unauthorized leave of absence is over now," he told Harley, approaching the cage. "It seems like you are my minion now." And she gave him a teasing wink, casual as though she had waltzed in on her own.

"What a leave it was too! Would you believe I saw the most pompous equestrian statue in the world?"


End file.
